ABSTRACT
The Northern landscape is best understood through a narrative of manufactured landscapes, Indigenous knowledge and new visions for human lifeways in an inevitably changed world. The agency of design at places perceived as peripheral is to move beyond peril and toward readiness for the future with a global consequence. As we examine the role of creative practice in the future of place, particularly places in the North seeing dramatic changes in migration, energy and economy, it is places at the periphery that are often called first to respond – such as in Alaska, where villages are faced with relocation and where people are witnesses to change each day. Creative practitioners in peripheral places move beyond nostalgia and warning bell, transitioning from identifying doomsday and moving towards a new form of documentation and design of survival. One hundred-year events are now annual—flash droughts, heat waves, coastal erosion, melting permafrost, hurricanes, bomb cyclones, polar vortices, atmospheric rivers, fires and pandemics. Throughout time, humans have gathered essential for survival—tools for making it out of dire predicaments alive—kits that are transportable and efficient, bundles as light as possible, anticipating the inconceivable and providing shelter from heat, cold, fire and war. Design in places like the North is not about anticipation of change; it is real-time response.
